“When do I get to meet him?” Dad asked.
“Uh— soon,” I said, though I winced a little as I said it. I still wasn’t sure I wanted that to happen, even if I patched things up with Rob. The clash of cultures would be ten times worse than when I met his parents.
“He didn’t just slip out tonight, did he?” asked Dad, glancing around the room.
“Do you want to look under the bed?” I asked, waving toward the bedroom.
“I’m sure that’s not necessary,” said Mom.
But Dad stood up and moved to the door of the bedroom, anyway. And peeked in. “Just checking to make sure you’re safe,” he said. “All the windows have locks on them?” he asked.
“Dad, they have good security here,” I said.
“I worry they depend too much on you having good luck,” said Dad. “There’s nothing as safe as a girl in her daddy’s house.”
Well, that might be true, but I was still safe here. Dad was staring out the window of my bedroom for several minutes before he came back out to the front room.
“You think Rob jumped out of a third story window?” I asked. It was almost funny.
“Did he?” asked Dad.
“Kent!” said Mom.
“I only meant that he’s supposed to be lucky enough a fall like that probably wouldn’t even hurt him. He can take chances.”
Like I took chances, he meant. Or used to, when I had all of my luck.
But Rob had never been like that. It was funny that I never thought about that until my parents came up here. Rob was cautious in everything. He didn’t have a motorcycle. He didn’t drink. He didn’t do any risky things. It was one of the reasons I liked him. He seemed safe and secure, and grown up. But suddenly it made me wonder why.
“Dad, it’s against dorm rules for boys to be in here ever, let alone this time of night.”
“And do the dorms enforce the rules?” asked Dad.
“It doesn’t matter if they enforce them or not because I don’t break the rules,” I said.
“What about this boyfriend of yours?”
“His name is Rob,” I put in. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to hire someone to step in for him temporarily while my parents were here.
“This Rob, then—is he a rule follower?”
“Yes, he is. That’s one of the reasons that we get along, Dad. He’s a nice guy. You’ll like him, I promise. You just need to give it a chance. And besides, I am sixteen.”
“I know exactly how old you are. And how old he is,” said Dad. “And I think I remember what being a teenage boy is like better than you ever will.”
I flushed at that.
“That’s not really why we came, though, is it?” said Mom, moving the conversation right along.
Wasn’t it?
Dad humphed a little.
“We came to see you, not to lecture you about your boyfriend,” said Mom.
“That might be why you came. But I came to see you AND to lecture you about her boyfriend,” said Dad.
“Goody,” I said sarcastically. “How long will it take? I hope until morning because I don’t really need sleep in order to go to school tomorrow.”
Dad turned away from the window. “It is late. We’ll talk to you about him tomorrow.”
“Or maybe another day entirely,” said Mom, winking at me.
“I want to make sure he doesn’t think he can get away with ignoring your parents. That’s disrespectful. I don’t know what this generation has come to. And I expect you to set up a time when we can meet with his parents, too. At a dinner, maybe. We’ll pay our share. We don’t expect handouts.”
I think Dad had no idea what kind of money Rob’s parents could throw around. A nice dinner out for them might cost as much as Mom and Dad’s house payment for a month. Or two.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I lied. If Rob’s parents thought I was bad, they’d think my parents were a hundred times worse. They would never let me keep dating Rob if they saw where I’d come from.
“She doesn’t have control over them,” Mom pointed out. “She can ask, but she can’t demand.”
“Well, her boyfriend should be the one to make the arrangements. Unless he doesn’t want his parents to know us?” said Dad.
I shook my head. Dad really had the wrong idea here. “Rob has already invited me over to meet his parents. They know me and I’m sure they’ll be happy to meet with you, if they can spare the time.” I wasn’t sure of this at all, but it wasn’t Rob’s fault that his parents were like they were.
“You’ve already met them?” asked Dad.
“Yes. Months ago.”
“Well, that’s all right, then. Does he treat his parents respectfully?”
“Very,” I said. Rob had respect for his parents, but it was the love I wasn’t so sure about. The only time I’d ever heard him really warm up was when he talked about his grandmother. But I’d never met her and Rob said she was in a home now and he didn’t get to see her very often.
“Well, tell us more about him. What’s he like?” said Dad.
I sighed. “He’s the Student Body President. And he’s popular. His parents are lucky and rich. He’s from a family that goes back to the time of the pilgrims.” Which is why maybe I’d been crazy for thinking that he and I could really last. And that it might have nothing to do with both of us having so much luck.
“I think you told us all that before,” said Mom drily.
Well, that was Rob’s resume, and I wanted them to understand why I was keeping them apart. Couldn’t they seem themselves as they would look to Rob’s parents? What Rob’s parents would say to them or the way they would look at them, sneering silently and oh-so-polite? It had been bad enough when I was there. It would be a thousand times worse with them.
“That’s not what he’s like, Trudy. That’s just about his luck. You might as well tell us his test score,” said Dad.
I opened my mouth to answer him, and then closed it. I guess he was right, in a way. I’d forgotten, since I came to St. James, how to measure people without thinking about their luck first and foremost.
And the truth was, I had no idea what Rob’s test score for luck was. It wasn’t something people from older families talked about. I learned that when I went to his parents. I kept thinking that telling them my luck score would make them impressed with me, but it didn’t work. Instead, they’d been taken aback that I would say that number out loud. Their expression had been about what you might expect if I’d mentioned to them how often I went to the bathroom.
“What is he really like?” asked Dad. “What makes him him, without all the luck?”
It was an interesting question. It might not be an entirely theoretical one, either. It was obvious what made my parents my parents, without luck. If Rob wanted to, he could see what he was like without luck, too. Not that I thought that would ever happen.
But what if my parents had luck? If I could slip them into Art’s room and somehow do it without them knowing. The thing is, I was pretty sure that if I asked my parents in advance, they would tell me they didn’t want it, they didn’t need it, that they had spent their whole lives without luck so why should they change now? They were proud of what they had done with what they had, proud enough that offering them more luck now would likely offend them. Maybe they were right, too. Maybe luck would only make their lives more difficult, because it changed things they’d gotten used to.
But I thought it would be good for Rob’s parents to see what the world was like without luck. It would be a great trick to get that bacteria into their house somehow, and let them see what it was like on the other side. I wouldn’t do it permanently, but as an experiment it might have merit. Except that it sounded like something Laura Chevely would do, and I didn’t want to do anything that made me like her.
“He’s really sweet,” I said, failing at thinking up some more eloquent way to put it.
“And handsome, by all accounts,” said Mom.
Dad wave
d a hand at that. “But what does he want to do after he graduates? Does he have ambitions? Wants to be a lawyer or a politician or something where you would never see him?” asked Dad.
“He’s not sure, actually. I don’t think he wants to do anything that high profile, actually. His dad is into business and before that his family did politics. You know, his great-grandfather was a President of the United States.” I was hoping that would shut Dad up, but it did the exact opposite. I should have known he wouldn’t be intimidated like that. It would intimidate people at St. James, but not my dad.
“A President, eh? And he thinks that’s something to brag about? In my opinion, most of the President of our country have been lazy good-for-nothings who couldn’t find a real job to do if it bit them in the ankle.”
I looked at Mom, who was struggling not to laugh.
“Why doesn’t he have a career making something with his hands? That’s what we need more of in this country. Things you can point to at the end of the day, and say—that wouldn’t exist without me.”
“Dad, right now he just wants to go to college and try some things out. He’s really good at English, reading books and interpreting them and stuff like that.” Hmm, Dad wouldn’t be impressed with that. I added, “He might want to be a college professor.” That was something Dad respected, as a teacher himself.
“An English teacher?” asked Dad. “So he writes well? Is this because of some sappy love poetry he’s written you?”
“No!” I said, blushing.
“Because if that’s what he thinks he does well, I’d like to read it,” said Dad.
“Stop!” said Mom. “Sit down and be appropriate. Your daughter does not have to show you her love poems. That’s private.”
“I don’t have any love poems!” I said. “Rob’s still in high school, you know. And so am I. We don’t have to decide everything right now.”
“Of course not, Trudy,” said Mom.
“With all that luck, it would be a crime to waste it on trivialities like—well, like those adventure sports we see on TV. Diving off of cliffs without any rope just to see what the luck does. There’s luck and then there’s stupidity,” Dad muttered.
Well, you could definitely tell what was on the television that Mom and Dad could get without cable.
“Rob doesn’t do stupid stuff like that,” I said. “He’s really smart, in lots of ways. It has nothing to do with his luck.”
“What really matters is how he treats you,” said Dad. There was a bit of a pause, and then he went on, “He’s not pushing you too hard for—you know? Is he?”
If there was any sure sign that my luck had decreased, this was it. What teenage girl wants to talk to her Dad about what she is doing with her boyfriend to express her affection?
Feeling my nostrils flare and my nose swell red with embarrassment, I said, “He’s a perfect gentleman, Dad. He never does presses me to do anything.” Which was the truth, and the whole of it. Rob’s kisses could make me melt, but he didn’t take advantage of that. Heavy breathing was about as dangerous as it got. But now I was starting to wonder if keeping Rob away from my parents had been the right choice on multiple levels.
“What does that mean? Surely he kisses you,” said Dad suspiciously.
I raised my eyebrows at that. Luckily, I didn’t have to answer because Mom stepped in. “Next thing you know, you’re going to ask her if he tilts his head to the side, and if he put his hands on her waist or around her shoulders. What his mouthwash tastes like and on and on.”
I cringed, and Dad did, too. There were some ways in which Dad and I were exactly the same. Mom tended to be a little more blunt.
“Some things are private, even for teenagers,” Mom concluded.
Did I say I had lost luck? Well, so long as she was my mother, I couldn’t complain much.
“Right,” said Dad, looking down a little. “It’s hard, when I’ve never met him and I haven’t seen you for over a year. I want to feel part of your life, and I don’t. I feel like we—I feel like we’re visitors, not family.”
I went and gave Dad another big hug. “Dad, you’ll always be my family.”
“Your luckless family,” said Dad.
That was what this was really about, wasn’t it? “I’m sorry I didn’t come home over the summer,” I said, feeling a little choked up over it suddenly.
“Don’t be sorry, Trudy. We understood. We knew you had important things to do.”
Had I?
“At least you write to us. Real letters, not email or texts,” said Dad. “You use real grammar and full sentences with punctuation.”
I laughed at that. Dad hated texting, mostly I think because he thought it taught people bad grammar skills. Maybe I could get Rob to show him an essay he wrote for English, so Dad would see how good he is at the things Dad cares about.
“Look, we’re all tired. Maybe we should get some sleep and talk in the morning,” I suggested.
“Truer words were never spoken,” said Dad. He tweaked my nose. “I guess you’re getting pretty smart in your old age.”
“Maybe you should go get our things,” said Mom, kissing Dad on the forehead.
“Right,” said Dad, and he hustled out. “At least there’s enough space in here for us to stay just this one night.”
I gaped at him. They hadn’t told me they expected to stay here, with me. I thought they had a hotel or something. Didn’t Mom say that the company was paying for them to stay in town? But how could I tell my parents I didn’t want them here?
“Mom, I’m not sure you’re allowed to do that. Visitors have to check in with the dorm mother and have to get permission weeks in advance,” I said.
Mom waved a hand at me. “Trudy dear, that’s for visitors. Not family.”
Right, and now I’d have to face the truth, when Mom and Dad met other people from St. James and saw what it was really like, not having any luck at all.
Chapter 10: Rob
Art came knocking on the door to my dorm room Thursday morning. Pounding on it, in fact. At three a.m.
I stumbled out of my bedroom, sure for that moment that it was the police there to arrest me for something I hadn’t done but looked guilty for, because of my lack of luck. My parents would get me out of it, but not before I was thoroughly embarrassed. And the truth would come out at last, even without Laura’s blackmail.
Colin was still sound asleep. He could sleep through anything, I think. Lucky son of a gun.
I stumbled over clothes, dirty plates on the floor, and stacks of paper that might or might not have homework on them. I think I got a paper cut, too. On my foot. Bad luck again.
When I saw it was only Art at the door, I was pretty annoyed. “What?” I snarled at him.
“I need your help,” he said. He put his hands together like he was praying. “Please. I’m desperate.”
“You sure you don’t want to go talk privately to Trudy instead?” I asked. “If it’s really important, I’m sure she’s the one for it.”
“Look, I’m sorry about that. I talked to Trudy because I figured she understood what life was like for people who have no luck in a way that neither of us ever can.”
“Huh?”
“Because of her parents. And all the people she grew up with. Her life was really different from ours, Rob.” He glanced around. “Can we get some lights on in here?”
I’d hesitated turning on the lights because I wanted to go back to sleep, but it seemed there was no help for it.
“So what’s up? This is something about luck and you think I can help because I have so much of it?” I asked, conscious of the irony here. Art was willing to tell me his secret now, it seemed, but only because he didn’t know mine.
“I don’t know,” said Art. “I don’t know if there’s any help for it now.” For the first time since I had known Art, he seemed truly distressed.
He moved into the front room and I gestured to the couch. Unfortunately, it was covered with what looked like
Colin’s photo album. There were pictures everywhere, and glues, and scissors of various kinds.
“Floor?” I said, and sat down on it. “What do you need, Art?” I was hoping it wasn’t really going to require luck, since I had none. I should tell Art the truth. I really should. And I would. Soon.
Art sat down heavily. “It’s gone,” he said, his head in his hands. His voice was so muffled, I could hardly hear him.
I felt suddenly sick, thinking of Laura and the key I’d given her. I’d thought there couldn’t be anything that valuable in his room. At least nothing he couldn’t just reproduce. But then again, Laura wouldn’t have asked for the key if she hadn’t had some evil plan in store. And I’d let her do it. I hadn’t had any choice. But I wasn’t sure Art would agree with me.
“All my work. The whole lab was gutted. I didn’t think anyone knew it was there except for—well, except for Trudy.”
“Lab?” I asked, feeling sick inside.
“My lab. Where I’ve been working on my experiment. In my basement apartment.”
“You never told me about an experiment,” I said faintly, feeling a stab of pain in my throat.
“I thought I left it locked, but I don’t know if I did now,” said Art. “Could I really be so stupid? Apparently, I could. And now I’m going to lose everything that matters to me.”
“Art, I’ve got to tell you something,” I said. I felt my bones start to ache, like they did when it was really cold outside.
“It’s going to have to wait,” said Art. “I really can’t think about anything else right now. I need to know who did this and why. And I need to know how to get everything back. If the whole world knows about my experiments on—” he shook his head.
“Experiment on what?”
Art considered.
“You’re going to have to tell me if you want me to help you find it,” I said.
Art ended up looking around the whole dorm room, checking to make sure Colin was really asleep by poking his foot with a pin (Colin still didn’t wake up) and then finally writing it down on a piece of paper. “Luck.”
An Ideal Boyfriend Page 9
